Recipe for Alfajores Cookies with Dulce de Leche

Hello, my name is Jenny. You can often find me in the kitchen, my hands full of flour happily handling the mixer. On my bilingual baking blog www.jennyisbaking.com you can find German classics as well as North and South American recipes. That’s because I was born in Uruguay, lived in the USA for a few years as a child, married a Colombian and spent a year in Canada after finishing high school.

That’s why I brought a specialty from Uruguay and Argentina today: alfajores (pronounced „alfachores“ in German). Alfajores can be found everywhere in Uruguay, they are something like the standard cookie that you like to eat in between. Alfajores from Uruguay differ from the original in Spain.

Usually, you use two cookies that are glued together with a filling, so they are always double cookies. Here I present a chocolate version filled with dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is a kind of caramel cream that you can buy everywhere in Latin America, similar to Nutella here it is used as a spread and cake filling. Meanwhile you can find it also in Germany in big supermarkets, mostly with jams and other sweet spreads.

These Alfajores are those with chocolate, that had to be easy for me as a Chocoholic. Since the double cookies are dipped in chocolate again at the end, you can freeze them and send them by mail. They also last quite long if you keep them cool. But I hope that they will disappear as quickly as they did with me.

Preparation of Alfajores

1. First, for the cookies, cream the softened butter with the sugar for a few minutes. Then add the egg and the honey and mix again thoroughly. At the end add flour, corn starch, baking cocoa, baking soda and baking powder and mix until a homogeneous dough is obtained. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the refrigerator for at least half an hour or overnight.

2. Cover two baking trays with baking paper and preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

3. Take the dough out of the fridge, divide it into two parts and roll it out to a thickness of about 2mm using a rolling pin. Either use a glass or a cookie cutter to cut out the dough in circles of about 5cm diameter. You should get at least 30 circles or more. Bake the trays one after another for about 8-10min, let the cookies cool down.

4. Then look for two cookies each, which fit together well in size. Spread one cookie with about a good teaspoon of dulce de leche, place the second cookie on top. If you don’t find any dulce de leche, let a can of sweetened condensed milk simmer for about 2 1/2 hours completely covered with water, add warm water if necessary, open it when cooled (!) and use it as cream.

5. Coarsely chop the chocolate blocks and melt them together with the butter and orange zest over low heat while stirring. Dip the Alfajores double cookies completely into the chocolate and let them become firm.

Alfajores with Dulce de Leche – My Conclusion

The Alfajores that Jenny baked for us look super delicious to me. I just don’t know if I have the leisure and patience to bake them myself. But if I did, then the Alfajores would surely go very well with my egg coffee from Vietnam.

As delicious as they look, I can understand why the Alfajores are so popular in Uruguay and Argentina.  If you’re looking for more great baking recipes, such as Colombian corn cakes with cheese filling or sea pavlova, then be sure to check out Jenny is Baking.

How is it with you, are you an enthusiastic hobby baker and do you have your own favorite recipe? If so, please write me in the comments, which is your favorite recipe. I am happy.